ATURJE  WITH 


iEGOR  JENKINS 


LIB. 

NIVE 
CALI 

SAN  DIEGO 


PUBLISHED  BY 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


THE  READING   PUBLIC. 
LITERATURE  WITH  A   LARGE  L. 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE   L 

AND 
FELLOW  TRAVELERS 


LITERATURE 
WITH  A  LARGE  L 

AND 

FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

BY 

MAcGREGOR  JENKINS 


BOSTON    AND    NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

Otfte  fttoertfibe  presM,  <JEambnD{je 

1919 


COPYRIGHT,    1919,   BY   MACGREGOR  JENKINS 
ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 


TO 

J.  D.  J. 

AND 

S.  E.  J. 


CONTENTS 

LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L       .      i 
FELLOW  TRAVELERS  •    53 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

^  I  ^HOSE  who  have  much  to  do 
•*•  with  the  making  and  selling  of  a 
product  known  as  literature  are  in  a 
position,  or  at  least  ought  to  be  in 
a  position,  to  know  something  of  the 
attitude  of  the  public  mind  toward 
this  particular  commodity. 

And  it  so  happens  that  this  attitude 
possesses  so  many  and  so  varied 
forms  that  the  study  is  an  endless  and 
a  fascinating  one.  It  also  happens 
that  some  of  its  manifestations  are 
so  extraordinary  and  so  humorous 
that  we  wonder  more  than  ever  at  the 
ingenuity  as  well  as  the  credulity  of 
the  human  mind. 

A  man  who  makes  shoes  assumes 
(perhaps  unconsciously)  an  attitude 

3 


LITERATURE  WITH  A   LARGE  L 

of  contempt  toward  this  useful  article, 
born  of  familiarity  and  a  true  knowl 
edge  of  how  poor  a  shoe  the  public 
will  accept  if  properly  cajoled.  I  have 
in  mind  a  gentleman  who  is  by  pro 
fession  a  repairer  of  automobiles. 
Long  familiarity  with  the  internals  of 
a  machine,  an  intimate  knowledge  of 
their  frailties,  and  an  appreciation  of 
the  sham  of  paint  and  varnish  have 
induced  in  this  man,  otherwise  a  kind 
and  affable  person,  a  depth  of  pessi 
mism  in  regard  to  automobiles  that 
the  wildest  enthusiasm  of  a  new 
owner  cannot  dissipate.  No  car  is  a 
good  car;  some  are  a  bit  better  than 
others,  but  none  are  good.  All  is 
vanity,  and  vain-glorying,  mortal 
man  is  born  for  sorrow,  and  the  auto 
mobile  is  an  especially  designed  in 
strument  provided  by  Providence  to 

4 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

inflict  a  righteous  punishment  upon 
man  and  woman  in  their  fallen  estate. 

In  the  following  pages  an  effort 
will  be  made  to  avoid  this  attitude 
of  despair  and  at  the  same  time  to  get, 
in  the  vernacular  of  the  "  movies,"  a 
"close-up"  of  this  much-discussed 
subject.  And  because  it  is  so  much 
discussed,  doubts  may  well  assail  us 
as  to  the  wisdom  of  saying  anything. 
One  of  the  most  depressing  attributes 
of  the  subject  is  the  fact  that  litera 
ture  seems  to  engender  more  utterly 
useless  and  unprofitable  conversation, 
and  more  futile  writing,  than  any 
other  subject  with  which  I  happen  to 
have  a  bowing  acquaintance. 

More  is  said  on  this  subject  that 
need  not  be  said,  and  more  written 
that  ought  not  to  be  written,  than  on 
any  other.  Unfortunately,  it  is  the 

5 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

fate  of  some  to  be  compelled  to  hear 
much  that  is  said  and  to  read  more 
that  is  written,  with  the  result  that  I, 
for  one,  long  with  a  great  and  fervent 
longing  for  a  region  where  the  alpha 
bet  is  unknown,  where  I  could  stand 
comfortably  on  one  leg,  draped  in  a 
becoming  garment  of  sheepskin,  and 
gaze  out  over  a  purple  ocean  to  no 
place  in  particular,  refreshing  the 
inner  man  at  intervals  with  a  ripe 
cocoanut  which  would  fall  when 
needed  from  a  convenient  tree.  No 
alphabet,  no  books,  no  schools,  no  lit 
erary  journals,  no  cults  and  isms 
and  other  sillinesses.  Only  an  all- 
pervading  peace,  and  sweet  com 
munion  with  happily  unlettered  sav 
ages. 

And  as  I  long  for  my  island,  I  am 
reminded   that   once   this   worn   old 
6 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

world  was  such  a  happy  place.  At 
once  I  find  myself  charmed  with  the 
contemplation  of  the  blissful  state  of 
man  before  literature  was  invented 
and  came  to  plague  him. 

As  this  discussion  is  designed 
purely  for  mental  relaxation,  suppose 
we  dally  with  this  bauble  for  a  mo 
ment.  It  will  do  no  harm  and  may 
serve  to  free  our  minds  of  other  and 
less  agreeable  thoughts. 

Contemplate  with  me,  then,  the 
cave  man:  secure  beneath  ground, 
enjoying  the  excitements  of  the  chase, 
eating  to  repletion  with  no  thought  of 
the  morrow,  battling  with  other 
tribesmen,  and  in  his  softer  moments 
indulging  in  masterful  and  vigorous 
wooing  of  the  maiden  of  his  choice. 
A  professor  of  literature  would  not 
perhaps  regard  this  as  an  ennobling 

7 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

or  enlightened  life,  but  to  some  of  us 
of  candid  mind  it  has  obvious  attrac 
tions. 

And  think  how  long  this  happy 
state  lasted  —  if  we  are  to  believe  the 
geologist,  perhaps  thousands  of  years. 

Truly  the  world  knew  a  happy  in 
fancy. 

Then  the  unhappy  day  dawned 
upon  which  some  eccentric  cave- 
dweller  was  fated  to  scratch  on  the 
wall  of  his  cave  the  rude  outline  of 
a  tiger.  Then  the  trouble  began.  I 
can  see  the  others  coming  to  admire 
and  to  discuss  the  new  wonder. 
Then  a  rival,  from  whose  hairy  arms 
perhaps  the  literary  gentleman  had 
snatched  the  lady  whom  he  hoped  to 
win,  came  and  sneered  at  the  draw 
ing —  it  was  cold,  it  was  unimag 
inative,  it  lacked  atmosphere  and 
8 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

motive,  it  really  did  not  look  like  a 
tiger;  and  there  we  are!  Two  schools 
of  literature  born  in  one  day,  and 
the  world  never  again  to  be  free  from 
the  turmoil. 

I  know  little  or  nothing  of  dates  — 
except  the  edible  ones  —  but  I  have 
been  informed  that  subsequent  to  this 
time  changes  came  fast  and  furious: 
some  one  invented  things  called 
letters,  and  so,  instead  of  drawing  a 
picture  of  a  tiger,  a  word  could  be 
written  that  meant  a  tiger.  Oh,  day 
of  unhappy  omen !  The  whole  human 
race  is  now  in  bondage  to  the  alpha 
bet. 

Take  up  your  child's  first  reader 
and  you  can  read  what  happened. 
And,  by  the  way,  a  first  reader  is 
to  me  a  fascinating  book,  so  much 
more  worth  while  than  most  novels, 

9 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

because  one  may  read  in  it  the  story 
of  the  human  race.  I  often  find  my 
self  engrossed  in  the  absorbing  nar 
rative  of  a  man  who,  wonderful 
though  it  may  be,  possesses  powers  of 
locomotion.  We  start  with  the  simple 
proposition  that  the  man  ran;  the 
context  does  not  deny  it ;  then  through 
a  page  of  involutions  and  evolutions 
of  this  simple  idea,  we  come  back  to 
the  place  we  stated  the  undenied  and 
undisputed  statement  that  the  man 
did  run ;  now  we  believe  it. 

So  with  the  cave-dweller — after 
the  picture,  then  the  word,  then  the 
narration  of  events. 

First,  simply  tiger. 

Then,  a  special  tiger  —  the  tiger. 

Statement  of  fact  —  the  tiger  runs. 

Interrogation  —  Will  the  tiger  run? 

Exhortation  —  See  the  tiger  run! 
10 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

Then,  long  after,  came  another 
great  step,  the  qualifying  word,  and 
some  long-haired  genius  evolved  "the 
tiger  runs  fast,"  and  then  it  was  all 
over  but  the  shouting  —  literature 
was  born  and  man  no  more  was  free. 

It  was  probably  all  very  harmless 
at  first,  used  as  it  was  only  as  a 
method  of  communication,  or  for  the 
relatively  innocent  statement  of  fact. 

Then  came  the  historical  sense,  and 
it  was  used  to  narrate  events  of  the 
past.  Then,  after  countless  genera 
tions,  came  the  philosophical  sense, 
and  man  began  to  give  expression 
through  the  written  word  to  abstract 
ideas.  Things  went  from  bad  to  worse 
than  worse,  and  the  human  race  did 
not  have  even  a  fighting  chance. 

Then  came  the  first  really  big 
change  —  the  appeal  to  the  imagina- 
II 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

tion.  Then  fiction  was  born.  Tired 
of  narrating  facts,  some  bright  boy 
decided  to  invent  some. 

But  out  of  all  this  horror  and 
gloom,  the  gods  did  have  a  golden  gift 
for  man  —  they  knew  what  he  was 
going  to  be  up  against  for  the  rest  of 
time,  and  so  they  gave  him  humor. 
The  stars  must  have  danced  in  their 
courses  the  day  the  first  humorist 
was  born.  I  wonder  who  he  was 
and  what  he  looked  like.  What  did 
he  do  or  say?  How  was  he  re 
ceived?  Was  he  promptly  shut  up, 
as  we  shut  up  some  of  the  really 
great  humorists  of  our  time  under  the 
impression  that  they  are  crazy? 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  first 
cave-dwelling  critic.  His  race  in 
creased  until  there  was  an  army  of 
them.  So  when  we  speculate  on  the 

12 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

attitude  of  the  public  mind  toward  lit 
erature  in  those  early  days,  we  have 
to  count  him  in. 

This  critic  and  his  crew  were  surly 
folk,  who  had  anticipated  our  great 
fault  of  taking  ourselves  too  seriously ; 
and  besides,  they  detected  in  all  these 
new  and  bewildering  literary  develop 
ments  a  horrid  fact.  This  humorist 
fellow  was  becoming  popular,  he  must 
be  squelched,  he  was  producing  a  kind 
of  literature  that  was  giving  pleasure, 
he  was  having  mild  fun  with  some  of 
the  budding  pomposities  of  that  early 
day  —  this  would  never  do.  This 
humorist  person,  and  we  would  better 
describe  him  if  we  were  to  call  him  a 
humanist,  was  making  people  believe 
that  literature  was  something  de 
signed  as  an  agreeable  adjunct  of 
daily  life  and  not  a  dark  and  mysteri- 

13 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

ous  science  known  only  to  a  few,  for 
whom  it  provided  a  livelihood.  This 
was  the  humanizing  idea  that  the 
critic  fought  in  those  early  days,  and 
the  bulk  of  so-called  literary  criticism 
to-day  seems  to  have  the  same  object 
in  view. 

When  letters  began  to  appeal  to  the 
imagination  and  to  give  pleasure, 
some  of  the  burden  was  lifted,  and 
the  real  lover  of  them  has  been  trying 
to  this  day  to  keep  that  horrid  burden 
lifted;  but  the  cave-dweller  critic 
even  to-day  thinks  it  is  all  wrong. 

Just  when  the  halcyon  days  of  let 
ters  were,  it  would  be  hard  to  say. 
Certainly  long  before  our  time.  Some 
remote  period  when  it  was  free  from 
all  pose  and  affection.  It  would  be 
hard  to  describe  that  time,  but  it 
would  seem  to  be  when  it  had 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

emerged  from  the  cave-dweller  period, 
but  was  still  elemental  enough  to  be 
simple.  It  was  probably  devoted  to 
the  doing  of  three  things. 

The  narration  of  important  events, 
great  battles,  victories,  migrations, 
and  the  like. 

The  presentation  and  interpreta 
tion  of  important  ideas. 

The  giving  of  pleasure. 

Here  are  involved  the  labors  of  the 
historian,  the  philosopher,  and  the 
humanist.  These  would  seem  to  me 
to  be  the  happiest  days  of  literature. 
They  were  the  days  when  men  and 
women  wrote  when  they  had  some 
thing  to  say;  when  the  putting  of  a 
thing  into  song  or  story  was  in  answer 
to  some  imperious  demand  for  indi 
vidual  or  national  self-expression, 
and  not  in  answer  to  the  ever-present 

15 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

contemporary  desire  to  get  into  print 
or  to  earn  robber  royalties.  Perhaps 
the  critic  fellow  was  useful  then  in 
curbing  over-production,  but  to-day, 
alas,  his  chief  function  seems  to  be 
to  increase  it. 

But,  after  all,  our  interest  in  that 
remote  period  is  more  or  less  aca 
demic;  what  we  are  interested  in,  or 
ought  to  be  interested  in,  is  the  status 
of  literature  in  the  year  of  grace  1919. 
Still  more  concerned  should  we  be  as 
to  our  attitude  toward  it.  We  have 
escaped  or  outlived  most  of  the  evils 
of  the  past,  but  it  has  remained  for 
recent  years  to  add  the  last  and 
crowning  insult  to  the  many  heaped 
on  literature  from  earliest  times.  And 
we  suffer  from  this  latest  folly  more 
than  any  other.  It  was  when  some 
idiot  conceived  the  brilliant  idea  of 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

spelling  literature  with  a  large  L.  He 
could,  with  as  much  reason  and  equal 
justice,  have  decided  that  salt  pork 
should  for  all  time  be  spelled  with  a 
large  S  and  a  large  P. 

The  results  were  momentous  and 
far-reaching.  At  once  he  brought  into 
being  a  cult.  He  took  in  some  ways 
the  most  useful  and  beneficent  thing 
in  life  away  from  life,  and  made  it 
remote  and  mysterious.  He  made  it 
an  end  instead  of  a  means. 

Suppose  some  one  decided  to-day 
to  spell  pastry  with  a  large  P.  What 
would  happen?  We  all  know.  At 
once  there  would  arise  discussions  on 
the  relation  of  pastry  to  human  life. 
There  would  be  solemn  discussion  as 
to  the  relative  merits  of  tin  and  paper 
plates.  There  would  be  the  Under- 
Crust  School  and  the  Upper-Crust 

17 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

School.  Should  cheese  be  served  with 
all  pastry  —  if  not,  with  what  kinds  ? 
Then,  the  psychologist  would  have  a 
whack  at  it  —  what  is  the  mental 
effect  of  pastry?  should  it  be  eaten  for 
breakfast?  and  the  doctor  would  tell 
us  that  its  consumption  leads  to  pre 
mature  baldness  and  to  juvenile 
crime.  Meanwhile  the  pies  would 
grow  worse  and  worse,  and  those  of 
us  who  like  them,  even  for  breakfast, 
would  be  defrauded  and  would  slowly 
starve  to  death. 

Now  that  is  just  what  happened  to 
literature.  Just  move  about  and  listen 
to  the  things  people  say,  just  listen  to 
the  empty  silliness  that  is  talked  — 
on  the  street,  in  the  home,  at  the  club, 
and,  alas,  in  the  lecture-rooms  of 
some  schools  and  colleges. 

Business  once  took  me  to  a  city 
18 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

where  I  had  no  friends;  but  the 
prompt  and  hospitable  reception  I  re 
ceived  from  strangers  was  a  delight. 
Unfortunately  my  new  friends  knew 
as  little  about  me  as  I  did  about 
them.  For  some  mysterious  reason 
they  fancied  me  to  be  a  Literary  Per 
son,  and  met  the  situation  bravely. 
I  was  invited  to  a  delightful  luncheon, 
to  which,  as  a  special  compliment  to 
me,  the  Local  Literary  Person  was 
also  invited. 

I  arrived  before  he  did,  and  spent  in 
common  with  my  hosts  a  wretched 
half  hour  speculating  as  to  the  sub 
jects  of  conversation  likely  to  be 
introduced.  By  tactful  questioning  I 
acquired  such  information  as  I  could 
as  to  the  Literary  Person's  achieve 
ments  in  the  world  of  letters.  His 
belated  arrival  —  attributed  to  some 

19 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

subtle  eccentricity  of  genius  —  per 
mitted  us  to  address  ourselves  to  the 
really  substantial  delights  of  the 
table;  but  after  that  the  awful  mo 
ment  arrived.  There  must  be  Lit 
erary  Conversation  after  lunch,  and 
the  two  Literary  Persons  were  sup 
posed  to  supply  it.  I  soon  exhausted 
the  few  general  observations  I  thought 
safe,  and  disaster  impended.  Then 
the  Literary  Person  saw  his  chance, 
and  halting  conversation  gave  way  to 
torrential  monologue  addressed  to  a 
subdued  and  wondering  audience.  At 
last  it  was  all  over  —  a  quiet  pipe  be 
neath  the  apple-blossoms  restored  my 
sanity.  The  same  group  met  in  the 
evening,  but  a  rumor  had  spread  that 
I  was  not  a  Literary  Person,  and  for 
some  reason  the  local  celebrity  was 
absent  —  I  fancy  he  had  discovered 
20 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

my  deplorable  condition.  But  what  a 
changed  party !  The  awful  incubus  of 
being  Literary  was  lifted  and  a  cheer 
ful  self-confidence  developed  in  us 
all.  I  found  myself  surrounded  by  a 
charming  group  of  real  people  —  gen 
uine,  frank  and  friendly  to  a  degree. 
We  parted  the  best  of  friends,  but  the 
promised  copy  of  the  Literary  Per 
son's  last  volume  of  verse,  duly  auto 
graphed,  has  never  reached  me.  I  fear 
I  was  a  disappointment. 

The  cruel  necessities  of  the  moment 
made  the  Literary  Pose  necessary  for 
these  good  people,  but  they  soon  made 
a  complete  and  joyful  recovery. 

Think  of  the  condition  in  which 
hundreds  find  themselves  when  this 
pose  becomes  habitual ! 

Slowly  people  have  been  divided 
into  two  classes :  those  who  feel  that 

21 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

they  must  play  the  game,  and  so  pose 
about  it;  and  another  class  of  more 
robust  souls  who  know  they  are  being 
cheated  out  of  one  of  the  best  things 
in  life,  and  are  so  mad  about  it  that 
they  throw  the  whole  thing,  lock, 
stock  and  barrel,  out  of  doors.  Most 
all  of  us  are  touched  a  little  by  the 
malady.  We  read  what  other  people 
read.  We  fall  for  the  publishers'  gush 
about  their  own  books  —  you  know 
the  publisher  knows  how  silly  they 
are:  they  call  them  "blurbs."  We  buy 
complete  editions.  We  read  free  verse, 
and  even  pretend  to  understand  it. 
We  pick  up  a  vocabulary  and  talk 
about  realism,  technique,  atmosphere, 
background,  fidelity  to  life,  and  so  on. 
There  is  not  a  person  living  who  has 
not  at  least  once  in  his  life  pre 
tended  to  have  read  a  book  he  never 

22 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

heard  of,  just  to  keep  the  conversa 
tion  going.  I  have  a  hundred  times, 
and  I  admit  it,  to  my  everlasting 
shame. 

All  this  silliness,  duplicity,  and  af 
fectation  we  owe  to  just  one  thing, 
and  that  is  the  large  L. 

Instead  of  being  a  fine,  simple, 
robust  thing  designed  to  narrate  and 
interpret  human  experience,  or  to 
contribute  to  the  wisdom  or  pleasure 
of  the  race,  literature  has  become  a 
toy.  A  miserable,  fondled,  petted 
thing  that  cannot  stand  on  its  own 
legs. 

Of  course,  having  reached  this  low 
estate,  with  half  the  world  making 
fools  of  themselves  about  it  and  the 
other  half  ignoring  it,  just  one  thing 
was  sure  to  happen,  and  it  did.  It 
was  promptly  taken  up  by  a  lot  of 

23 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

people  who  wanted  a  new  toy.  They 
formed  clubs  to  discuss  it,  they  talked 
and  they  talked,  and  they  talked. 
They  even  went  so  far  as  to  ask  others 
to  talk  to  them,  and  I  am  credibly  in 
formed  that  in  some  extreme  cases 
they  have  been  known  to  pay  people 
for  talking  to  them.  It  all  became  a 
sort  of  cult.  Then,  of  course,  these 
simple  folk  were  exploited  by  smooth 
impostors  who  won  fame  of  a  certain 
sort,  and  riches  too. 

A  broad-brimmed  hat,  a  flowing 
neck-tie,  and  the  trick  was  done. 
Under  the  impression  that  they  were 
worshipping  at  the  shrine  of  Litera 
ture,  people  nocked  to  lectures, 
bought  mountains  of  books,  and 
achieved  a  pleasant  glow  of  mild  en 
thusiasm  for  something,  they  knew 
not  exactly  what. 

24 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

Some  of  this  silliness  does  no  spe 
cial  harm,  because  a  certain  propor 
tion  of  people  must  be  silly  about 
something;  and  one  thing  is  as  good 
as  another;  and  even  literature  with 
a  large  L  is  less  harmful  than  another 
man's  wife  or  another  woman's  hus 
band. 

But  what  really  did  do  harm  hap 
pened  when  a  lot  of  perfectly  good, 
sincere  people  became  bewitched  with 
the  big  L,  and  began  to  teach  it.  The 
college  student  was  confronted  with 
a  new  and  unfamiliar  vocabulary  — 
he  was  forced  to  consider  sonnet-con 
struction  till  he  loathed  the  sight  of 
fourteen  lines  of  verse,  one  below  the 
other.  While  the  literary  club  was 
putting  silliness  —  with  a  big  S  —  into 
literature,  many  schools  and  colleges 
were  robbing  it  of  interest  and  beauty 

25 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

—  the  very  elements  by  which  it 
should  have  appealed. 

The  net  result  was  rebellion  on  the 
part  of  a  lot  of  sensible  people  who 
simply  would  have  none  of  it.  And 
it  was  at  just  about  this  time  that 
most  of  us  discovered  literature  — 
and  at  no  worse  period  in  its  career 
could  we  have  been  introduced  to  it. 
Some  of  us  were  fortunate  enough  to 
be  introduced  to  it  in  early  life.  Most 
of  Bryant's  translations  of  Homer 
were  read  aloud  to  me  before  I  was 
ten  years  old. 

By  the  time  we  went  to  school  we 
had  found  it  was  pleasant  to  read, 
and  we  knew  and  loved  a  few  good 
books.  Then,  we  went  to  school,  and 
were  like  the  little  girl  who  had 
learned  French  from  her  nurse  and 
liked  it,  until  she  found  out  that  there 
26 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

was  a  grammar,  and  then  she  hated  it. 
We  discovered  that  literature  had  to 
be  studied,  and  the  study  was  made  so 
dull  that  we  almost  forgot  our  child 
ish  pleasure  in  good  books.  We  came 
out  of  school  and  we  found  that  most 
of  the  world  was  gabbling  about 
Literature.  We  thought,  now  for 
some  real  fun !  and  we  recalled  all  we 
knew  before  we  went  to  school.  But 
alas!  these  people  weren't  gabbling 
about  books,  they  were  gabbling 
about  Literature. 

There  was  the  simple  soul  who  be 
lieved  anything  printed  to  be  worth 
reading — oh !  the  magic  of  the  printed 
page !  The  itch  for  it,  the  craving  to 
see  one's  name  upon  it,  and  the  con 
soling  thought  that  many  of  the 
world's  greatest  writers  found  it  diffi 
cult  to  find  a  publisher  —  all  these 
27 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

brought  into  being  that  piratical  per 
son,  posing  as  a  publisher,  who  en 
courages  authors  to  publish  provided 
they  —  the  authors  —  pay  the  bills. 
What  tragedies  of  self-denial  to  bring 
the  little  book  out!  What  agonies  of 
uncertainty  as  to  its  reception  —  when 
no  reception  at  all  awaits  it!  and 
then  the  bitterness  of  disappointment, 
all  the  more  bitter  because  it  must  be 
bravely  stifled  and  concealed!  The 
so-called  publisher  makes  a  fair  profit 
on  the  manufacture  of  the  book, 
promptly  forgets  his  promises  of 
fame  and  fortune  to  the  author,  and 
turns  to  other  fields. 

Then  there  were  the  people  for 
whom  the  great  school  of  "  vaporers  " 
evidently  write  —  those  who  demand 
the  literary  sauce  highly  spiced  and 
served  to  an  accompaniment  of  jazz 
28 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

music;  those  little  folk  who  take  all 
their  dissipation  and  excitement  vi 
cariously,  and  evidently  consider  the 
tawdry  tales  they  read  to  be  faith 
ful  pictures  of  an  alluring  world  in 
which,  but  for  force  of  circumstance, 
they  would  cut  a  dashing  figure.  The 
same  reader  who  used  to  buy  "The 
Secrets  of  the  French  Court"  for  a 
dollar  down  and  a  dollar  a  month, 
now  reads  Mr.  Chambers  and  gets 
vastly  more  for  his  money,  for  "The 
Secrets  "  was  a  sham,  but  Mr.  Cham 
bers  is  a  generous  soul  and  gives  full 
measure.  In  our  search  for  people  in 
terested  in  good  books  we  found  these 
type  a-plenty  and  also  the  solemn 
person  who  had  acquired  a  habit  of 
talking  about  art. 

An  "Art "  must  be  an  awful  thing 
to  be  afflicted  with.  Those  who  have 
29 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

escaped  its  baneful  influence  should 
lead  lives  of  joy  and  thanksgiving. 
One  of  the  most  extreme  cases  of 
"Art "  which  has  ever  come  under  my 
personal  observation  was  a  lady  — 
quite  unknown  to  me  —  who  sought 
my  advice  in  regard  to  a  separation 
from  her  husband  because  he  did  not 
understand  her  Art. 

If  her  Art,  whatever  it  happened 
to  be,  was  as  crude  as  her  method  of 
applying  powder  to  her  nose,  the 
wretch  certainly  had  some  excuse. 

Another  severe  case  of  "Art"  was 
a  young  man  who  had  an  opportunity 
to  live  in  China  for  a  year  or  two  and 
to  travel  the  world  over  incidentally, 
who  hesitated  to  leave  the  snug 
security  of  his  suburban  boarding 
house  lest  his  "Art"  suffer.  I  be 
lieve  he  was  prevailed  upon  to  take 

30 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

the  journey  and,  happily  for  him,  his 
Art  did  not  survive  the  rigors  of  the 
experience. 

In  our  search  for  people  sharing 
our  innocent  interest  in  books,  we 
encountered  all  sorts  of  strange  folk 
who  seemed  to  spend  an  inordinate 
amount  of  time  and  energy  in  making 
up  their  minds  whether  or  not  a  book 
stands  the  test  of  what  they  somewhat 
Vaguely  call  "technical  analysis," 
quite  unmindful  of  the  vastly  more 
important  question  as  to  whether  the 
book  gives  inspiration  and  pleasure. 
Such  a  person  seems  to  me  to  be  in 
the  same  general  class  with  the  man 
who  spends  his  entire  life  measuring 
the  length  of  babies'  noses. 

These  and  hundreds  of  other  dread 
ful  types  all  appeared  after  literature 
was  first  spelled  with  a  large  L.  And 

31 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

it  is  the  greater  pity  because  all  of  us 
who  are  normal  human  beings  have 
for  the  most  part  an  unerring  instinct 
for  the  good  book. 

One  of  my  most  valued  acquaint 
ances  is  a  young  lady  who  has  just 
turned  her  seventh  year,  and  upon 
whom  I  sometimes  try  literary  ex 
periments.  She  knows  a  good  book 
when  she  sees  it.  She  tolerates  with 
polite  indifference  the  thousand  in 
anities  which  are  prepared  for  and 
offered  to  young  persons  of  her  years, 
but  they  do  not  interest  her. 

But  read  her  a  chapter  from  Ken 
neth  Grahame's  "Wind  in  the  Wil 
lows  "  and  she  is  all  eagerness  and  at 
tention.  A  solemn  friend  of  mine 
protested  that  the  book  "lacked 
scale."  How  could  Toad  array  him 
self  in  the  wash-lady's  garments? 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

The  only  possible  answer  is,  if  you 
have  a  mind  like  that,  don't  read 
Kenneth  Grahame  or  Stevenson  or 
Hawthorne,  or  in  fact  anything  ex 
cept  an  elementary  geometry  with  its 
alluring  descriptions  of  an  isosceles 
triangle. 

This  young  person  knows  a  lot 
about  books.  She  knows  that  a  book 
to  be  a  good  book  must  interest  and 
amuse  —  in  other  words,  there  are 
just  two  things  that  a  book  ought  to 
do:  it  should  help  interpret  human 
experience  or  it  should  give  pleasure. 
You  could  almost  make  it  one  thing, 
for  it  will  not  give  pleasure  unless  it 
does  in  some  way,  in  some  measure, 
interpret  life. 

And  if  the  large  L  is  a  bore  and  a 
nuisance  to  the  right-minded  reader, 
think  what  havoc  it  has  wrought 

33 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

among  the  young  writers.  It  has 
spoiled  more  young  writers  than  all 
the  other  forces  of  evil  combined. 
These  eager  young  men  and  women 
who  could  write,  and  write  to  the 
everlasting  satisfaction  of  their  souls, 
do  not  want  to  write,  they  want  to 
produce  Literature.  They  do  not 
understand  that  a  jaded  middle-aged 
world  would  give  a  lot  to  know  how 
life  reacts  on  a  fresh  young  mind, 
expressed  in  free,  unhackneyed  terms 
of  youth,  nor  do  they  feel  the  dis 
appointment  they  inflict  when  their 
outgivings  are  found  to  be  only  an 
other  immature  attempt  to  produce 
Literature  that  will  stand  the  test 
of  Technical  Analysis.  Some  future 
generation  may  learn,  and  then 
there  will  be  written  some  things 
worth  reading,  though  they  may 

34 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

cause  pain  to  the  grammarian  and 
stylist. 

But  what  is  worse  than  all  this,  the 
large  L  is  in  a  fair  way  to  rob  life  of 
one  of  its  greatest  pleasures  and 
solaces.  That  it  may  not  do  so,  the 
first  and  most  important  thing  for  us 
to  do  is  to  acquire  a  correct  concep 
tion  of  what  literature  really  is.  To 
do  this,  first  of  all,  let 's  dispense  with 
the  large  L. 

It  is  not  an  exact  science. 

It  is  not  —  except  indirectly  —  an 
art. 

It  is  not  a  collection  of  books. 

It  is  not  a  school  of  thought,  made 
up  of  rules,  dogmas,  technical  restric 
tions,  and  scientific  definitions  and 
regulations. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is 

A    medium    of    expression,    like 

35 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

speech,  gesture  and  grimace  —  to  be 
sure,  very  highly  developed  and  com 
plicated,  but  in  its  essentials,  simple 
and  understandable. 

Now  for  most  of  us  it  is  not  in  the 
least  important  whether  this  medium 
is  used  with  technical  correctness  or 
not;  what  concerns  us  is  who  is 
using  it  and  what  is  he  communicat 
ing  to  us.  If  we  have  reason  to  sup 
pose  that  the  person  using  it  has  had 
experiences  or  entertains  ideas  which 
are  of  interest  or  value,  the  reading  of 
what  he  has  to  say  will  probably  be 
worth  while. 

Surprise  has  often  been  expressed 
that  the  countless  books  about  the 
war  are  as  good  as  they  are.  The  ex 
traordinary  thing  is  that  any  of  them 
should  not  be  good,  for  the  normal 
man  with  a  great  story  to  tell  will  tell 

36 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

that  story  well  ninety-nine  times  out 
of  a  hundred.  I  have  heard  surprise 
expressed  that  these  books  are  so 
good  from  a  technical  standpoint,  al 
though  not  written  for  the  most  part 
by  trained  writers.  This  would  seem 
to  be  exactly  the  explanation.  These 
men  are  telling  their  story  —  they  are 
not  producing  Literature.  It  has  un 
fortunately  required  a  great  war  to 
bring  to  these  men  the  realization  that 
they  can  tell  a  story.  Some  of  them 
may  perhaps  find  it  possible  to  tell  the 
great  stories  of  peace  with  the  same 
directness  and  skill. 

Among  the  many  qualities  of  a 
good  book  to  which  the  professional 
literary  person  often  refers,  there  is 
but  one  the  literary  definition  of 
which  need  be  borrowed  by  the  man 
in  the  street,  and  that  is  "  philosophic 

37 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

background"  —  truly  a  cumbersome 
and  polysyllabic  phrase,  but  it  seems 
difficult  to  invent  a  better  one.  It 
simply  means  that  there  is  a  lot  in  a 
given  book  which  one  cannot  see  but 
which  one  must  feel.  It  means  that  a 
book,  be  it  narrative,  verse,  essay,  or 
what-not,  deals  with  broadly  funda 
mental  things  and  is  applicable  to  any 
time  or  clime.  To  take  an  extremely 
familiar  and  homely  example,  this 
would  seem  to  explain  the  charm  to 
the  adult  of  "Alice  in  Wonderland," 
and  it  is  this  quality  which  the  child 
perceives  instinctively,  and  appre 
ciates.  Has  any  one  ever  heard  an 
American  child  question  the  charm  or 
interest  of  the  book  on  the  ground 
that  Alice  was  a  little  English  girl  and 
many  of  her  experiences  typically 
British?  By  the  magic  of  the  author, 

38 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

Alice  stands  for  all  time  in  every 
clime  the  personification  of  the  child- 
mind  expressed  in  terms  infinitely 
more  deft  and  convincing  than  those 
of  the  modern  child-psychologist. 

If  uninfluenced  by  the  baneful  ef 
fect  of  the  large  L,  and  untrammeled 
by  tradition,  I  believe  each  of  us 
would  instinctively  select  the  good 
book  —  not  all  the  same  one,  but  each 
to  his  own  liking,  as  individual  taste 
may  demand.  For  this  reason  it  has 
always  seemed  to  me  a  pity  that  peo 
ple  should  make  a  conscious  effort  to 
select  their  reading.  The  arbitrary 
choice  of  a  list  of  titles  seems  to  me 
a  great  mistake.  The  charm  of  real 
reading  is  its  digressiveness  —  the  fact 
that  one  book  leads  to  another.  Get 
started  with  fiction,  and  you  may  find 
yourself  in  metaphysics,  but  in  every 

39 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

transition  from  book  to  book,  you 
have  unconsciously  followed  some 
natural  intellectual  craving.  Conse 
quently,  avoid  libraries  of  the  best 
books,  avoid  lists  of  helpful  and 
stimulating  reading,  and,  above  all, 
avoid  lists  of  books  representing  lit 
erature  with  a  large  L.  Avoid,  as  you 
would  the  plague,  the  person  who 
talks  to  you  about  intellectual  de 
velopment.  It  is  too  late  for  most  of 
us  to  think  about  that  now.  If  we 
were  ever  going  to  develop  intellect 
ually,  we  probably  would  have  done 
so  long  before  this.  Let  us  accept  our 
intellectual  bankruptcy  as  it  stands 
to-day,  and  make  the  best  possible 
settlement  with  our  creditors. 

The  prescription   I   am  trying  to 
write   and    compound   is   just   sheer 
pleasure  and  pleasure  alone,  all  of 
40 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

which  is  very  well  as  long  as  it  is 
possible  to  stick  to  general  terms; 
but  when  asked  to  particularize, 
difficulties  present  themselves.  In 
stead  of  giving  a  list  of  recommended 
books  which  will  give  the  added  pleas 
ure  to  life  which  we  are  seeking, 
it  is  far  easier  to  make  some  sug 
gestions  as  to  the  books  which  should 
be  avoided. 

As  a  rule,  the  book  with  a  mis 
sion,  the  book  consciously  written  to 
achieve  a  certain  result,  will  be  a 
book  not  sadly  missed  if  you  omit  to 
read  it.  As  a  general  thing,  the  ex 
tremely  popular  book  is  more  likely 
to  be  popular  through  its  defects  than 
through  its  excellences ;  and  as  we  are 
seeking  pleasure  alone,  let  us  avoid 
the  solemn  books  and,  by  the  same 
token,  let  us  avoid  the  glad  books. 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

These  little  repositories  of  conscious 
sweetness  and  light  are  to  my  mind 
the  most  mournful  volumes  ever 
written. 

A  word  has  been  said  in  defense  of 
the  aimless  reader.  Purposeful  read 
ing  resembles  the  ordeal  of  a  three- 
mile  constitutional  at  an  appointed 
hour  of  the  day  over  an  appointed 
stretch  of  road.  The  aimless  reader, 
on  the  contrary,  wanders  through  the 
by-paths  that  invite,  and  gets,  in  addi 
tion  to  fresh  air  and  exercise,  a  thou 
sand  other  stimulating  sensations. 
You  can  start  almost  anywhere  in  the 
world  of  books,  and  open  a  thousand 
vistas,  any  one  of  which  you  may  fol 
low  to  your  profit.  Simply  read  along 
the  lines  of  least  resistance,  and  you 
will  find  your  pathway  varied  and 
beautiful  indeed. 

42 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

There  is  a  hopelessly  Philistine  ex 
pression,  much  jeered  at  and  much 
criticised.  It  is  the  hopeless  utterance 
of  the  inartistic  when  confronted  with 
the  artistic.  Bewildered  and  over 
come,  we  take  refuge  in  the  statement 
that  we  "  know  little  of  art,  but  we 
know  what  we  like."  The  superior 
mind  scoffs  at  this,  but  fortunate  I 
say  is  the  man  who  does  know  what 
he  likes.  It  will  prove  a  safeguard,  if 
you  are  a  normal  person,  and  you 
won't  go  far  wrong  if  you  read  what 
you  like,  in  preference  to  what  other 
people  recommend. 

Incidentally,  have  your  reading 
give  you  more  than  the  passing  pleas 
ure  of  the  moment.  Let  it  store  up  for 
you  unconsciously  a  wealth  of  inter 
est  upon  which  you  may  freely  draw 
if  emergency  demands.  Such  a  bank 

43 


LITERATURE  WITH  A   LARGE  L 

account  may  prove  a  very  present 
help  in  time  of  trouble. 

A  man  of  my  acquaintance  lay 
many  weeks  wounded  in  a  German 
hospital,  and  suddenly  one  day  he  re 
called  that  of  the  very  few  books 
which  he  had  read  in  recent  years, 
"  Henry  Esmond  "  was  one.  He  spent 
weeks  and  months  patching  the  story 
together  and  living  it  over  again  in  its 
minutest  details.  He  believes  to-day 
that  it  saved  his  health  and  sanity.  A 
friend  of  mine,  afflicted  with  sleepless 
nights,  finds  them  robbed  of  half  the 
terrors  because  during  these  quiet, 
solitary  hours  he  re-creates  Pickwick. 

But  to  return  to  our  literary  friend 
and  his  polysyllabic  phrase.  We  have 
wandered  far  afield,  but  curiously 
enough  we  find  that,  without  excep 
tion,  any  book  which  pays  a  fair  re- 

44 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

ward  for  the  time  and  trouble  of  read 
ing  it,  has  in  greater  or  less  degree 
"  philosophic  background."  The  books 
which  lack  it  seem  by  comparison 
strangely  unreal  and  unrelated  to  life. 
They  seem  to  me  to  resemble  in  some 
curious  fashion  many  of  the  cata 
logues  sent  me  by  tradespeople  in  the 
hope  that  I  may  become  interested  in 
their  wares.  They  present  an  endless 
variety  of  things  and  they  deal  with 
the  most  intimate  minutiae  of  human 
existence' — from  your  morning  den 
tifrice  to  the  lock  on  your  front  door 
in  which  you  turn  the  key  at  night. 
Intimate  as  all  these  subjects  are, 
these  interesting  volumes  fail  to  re 
flect  life. 

Most  noticeable  is  this  lack  in  the 
catalogue  of  the  manufacturer  and 
dealer  in  shoes.  In  its  pages  are  de- 

45 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

picted  in  all  the  lustre  and  beauty  of 
coated  paper  and  printer's  ink  the 
precise  and  perfect  outline  of  the  per 
fect  shoe.  Never  was  shoe  so  grace 
fully  moulded,  never  was  shoe  pre 
sented  in  more  alluring  confusion  of 
high-lights  and  half-tones,  never  were 
insteps  designed  with  more  exquisite 
curves,  never  were  buttons  arrayed 
with  greater  symmetry  or  more  per 
fect  precision;  and  yet  they  do  not 
seem  to  represent  shoes  in  the  least. 
They  look  less  like  shoes  than  any 
thing  else  in  the  world,  and  yet  the 
artist  and  the  engraver  have  lavished 
care  and  labor  to  make  it  so.  Lay  this 
alluring  document  on  the  library  table 
and  mount  the  stairs.  Before  some 
chamber  door  you  see  a  pair  of  tiny 
shoes.  Gone  is  the  lustre,  vanished 
the  perfect  contour,  dingy  and  droop- 

46 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

ing  are  the  buttons,  the  glossy  sur 
faces  reduced  to  a  grimy  monotone, 
heels  awry  and  toes  worn  rough.  By 
no  possible  stretch  of  the  imagination 
can  this  little  pair  of  shoes  claim  any 
manner  of  kinship  to  the  imperial 
glory  of  those  in  the  catalogue  —  and 
still  they  seem  to  bear  a  certain  in 
timate  relationship  to  human  life 
which  their  more  glorious  prototypes 
do  not. 

The  hundredth  book  is  the  little 
shoes  at  the  head  of  the  stairs,  the 
other  ninety-nine  are  those  in  the 
catalogue,  and  only  one  book  of  that 
hundred  is  worth  reading  —  it  is  not 
difficult  to  guess  which  one  it  should 
be. 

I  trust  that  nothing  I  have  written 
will  be  construed  as  a  sweeping  con 
demnation  of  the  many  entirely 

47 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

worthy  efforts  which  aim  to  guide  the 
literary  tastes  of  the  reading  public. 
There  are  thousands  of  individuals 
and  hundreds  of  clubs  with  genuine 
literary  interests,  quite  free  from  pose, 
that  do  much  to  influence  and  help 
others.  To  such  as  these,  my  utter 
ances  have  no  special  point  beyond 
the  fact  that  it  is  their  duty  to  teach 
the  doctrine  of  the  humanist  to  the 
countless  thousands  of  people  outside 
of  their  circle  who  do  not  yet  realize 
how  fine  and  stimulating  and  pleas 
ure-giving  a  thing  literature  with  a 
small  L  may  be. 

The  half  of  the  world  which  is  silly 
over  the  large  L  does  not  interest  us. 
Let  them  go.  They  are  having  a  good 
time.  But  the  half  of  the  world  which 
does  excite  our  interest  and  pity  is  the 
rebellious,  sullen,  inarticulate  half 
48 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

who  sees  in  all  literature  only  "  high 
brow  stuff"  to  be  avoided  and  con 
demned.  What  a  rich,  fine  thing  they 
are  missing!  and  how  much  more 
worth  the  living  would  be  their  lives 
if  they  could  be  made  to  realize  that 
all  the  pose  and  cant  and  affectation 
which  they  sneer  at  and  condemn,  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  real 
function  of  letters. 

Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  com 
mercial  traveler  who  wandered  over 
the  face  of  our  broad  country,  living, 
sleeping,  and  eating  amid  the  ornate 
discomforts  of  transcontinental  rail 
way  trains.  He  confined  his  reading 
largely  to  his  "  house  organ  "  and  be 
yond  its  narrow  confines  knew  noth 
ing  of  the  world  of  letters  except  an 
occasional  novel  or  magazine  recom 
mended  by  the  train-boy. 

49 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

One  memorable  night  he  sat  for 
lorn  and  desolate,  alone  in  the  smok 
ing  compartment.  The  last  line  of 
the  "  house  organ  "  had  been  read  and 
re-read.  No  ministering  train-boy 
brought  him  a  multi-colored  mag 
azine.  The  train  was  late  and  growing 
later  every  hour.  As  he  stirred  un 
comfortably  in  his  seat,  his  hand  fell 
upon  a  book  left  behind  by  some  more 
fortunate  traveler  who  had  reached 
his  longed-for  destination.  He  picked 
it  up  languidly  and  glanced  through 
the  pages.  There  were  no  illustrations, 
and,  as  Alice  said  to  her  sister,  not 
enough  conversation  to  make  the 
book  look  interesting.  From  sheer 
boredom  he  began  to  read.  Presently 
the  train  crept  on  to  a  siding,  heaved 
a  heavy  sigh,  and  stopped.  The  lonely 
reader  did  not  notice  that  his  journey 

50 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

was  interrupted,  but  read  page  after 
page  with  increasing  delight.  When 
the  gray  dawn  came  over  the  prairie 
and  the  train  still  stood  on  the  siding, 
the  reader  closed  the  book  and  looked 
out  of  the  window  on  to  a  new  world. 
He  had  discovered  Stevenson. 

When  at  last  his  journey  was 
ended,  his  first  duty  was  to  sit  down 
and  write  a  letter  describing  his  ex 
perience.  This  letter  happened  to 
reach  me  by  a  circuitous  route  and  it 
became  my  pleasure  to  answer  it.  For 
some  time  we  explored  the  new  world 
together,  and  such  trifling  service  as  I 
could  render  was  amply  repaid  by  the 
delight  to  be  found  in  the  unspoiled 
enthusiasm  of  a  man  who  had  dis 
covered  the  pleasure,  the  profit  and 
the  inspiration  that  books  can  give. 

When  I  see  the  smoke  ascending 

Si 


LITERATURE  WITH  A  LARGE  L 

from  offerings  on  the  altar  of  litera 
ture  with  a  large  L,  when  I  hear  the 
weird  incantations  of  its  priests  and 
priestesses,  when  I  view  the  elaborate 
edifice  of  untruth  which  they  have 
erected,  and  despair  for  the  future  of 
my  race,  the  lonely  figure  of  the  man 
who  discovered  Stevenson  comes  be 
fore  me,  and  I  am  content. 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

IT  is  now  so  long  ago  that  I  left 
college  that "  the  humanities  "  had 
hardly  been  invented  in  my  day,  at 
least  we  heard  very  little  about  them. 
But  since  that  time  I  am  told  they 
have  come  to  be  discussed  a  good 
deal  and  have  made  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  first  and  last  for  our  peda 
gogical  brethren.  If  others  discuss 
them,  why  should  not  I  ? 

I  am  a  profound  believer  in  the 
theory  so  well  expounded  by  Lewis 
Carroll,  who  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Humpty-Dumpty  a  phrase  of  undying 
significance  when  he  made  him  say 
that  "words  should  be  made  to  mean 
what  you  want  them  to  mean."  The 
only  people  I  know  who  adhere 

55 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

strictly  to  this  principle  are  the  psy 
chologists  :  that  is  why  I  love  to  hear 
a  psychologist  talk.  Of  course,  I 
understand  not  a  word  he  is  saying, 
but  it  is  a  noble  and  an  inspiring 
spectacle  to  see  a  mere  human  being 
crack  a  whip  over  an  entire  vocabu 
lary  and  see  the  words  jump  up  on 
their  little  red  chairs  like  so  many 
trained  seals. 

So  when  I  say  "  humanities  "  please 
realize  that  I  do  not  care  at  all  what 
any  one  else  thinks  the  word  means  — 
I  am  having  it  mean  what  I  want  it  to 
mean. 

I  am  not  a  psychologist  or  an  ed 
ucator  or  a  sociologist.  I  am  only  a 
publisher,  and  that  is  a  sufficiently 
humble  vocation  to  keep  me  away 
from  the  forbidden  heights  and 
depths. 

56 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

But  sometimes,  as  I  go  about  my 
daily  task,  I  suspect  that  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  interest  to  be  observed 
by  any  one,  if  he  cultivate  an  open 
mind  and  seeing  eyes.  So  I  am  draw 
ing  entirely  from  the  humdrum  daily 
experiences  of  a  commuting  business 
man  for  what  I  say,  and  if  we  bump 
into  psychology  or  education  or  civics, 
it's  no  fault  of  mine.  We  can  blame 
it  to  Society  or  the  Social  Order  or 
the  Tariff  or  any  other  convenient 
bearer  of  blame  for  all  burdensome 
things. 

In  the  first  place,  did  you  ever  try 
the  experiment  of  really  looking  at 
people?  It's  quite  amusing.  They  are 
so  different  from  what  they  seem. 

The  secret  of  forgetting  names  and 
faces  is  really  inattention.  If  you  hear 
an  interesting  thing  about  a  person, 

57 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

you  rarely  fail  to  look  at  him  care 
fully.  I  have  never  had  the  pleasure 
of  meeting  Dr.  Cook  of  polar  fame, 
but  if  I  ever  do,  I  think  I  shall  know 
him  the  next  time  I  see  him. 

A  man  or  woman  with  daughters  is 
apt  to  look  with  interest  at  their 
friends ;  but  unless  there  be  some  spe 
cial  reason  for  personal  interest  on 
our  part,  we  are  for  the  most  part 
quite  indifferent  to  the  people  we 
meet. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  to 
most  of  us  any  one  outside  of  our  im 
mediate  family  or  circle  of  intimates 
is  nothing  but  a  more  or  less  distin 
guishable  blur  between  us  and  the 
light.  This  accounts,  perhaps,  for  our 
pathetic  lack  of  knowledge  of  our  fel 
low  beings. 

What  do  we  know  of  the  citizens  of 

58 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

our  own  town?  We  may  not  be  able 
to  know  very  much.  We  may  not  be 
able  to  do  much  for  our  fellows.  We 
can  at  least  cultivate  a  sympathetic 
attitude,  and  incidentally  get  a  good 
deal  of  amusement. 

I  have  amused  myself  for  many 
years  by  watching  people  en  masse. 
It  is  enormously  entertaining.  I  know 
people  who  say  "  I  hate  a  crowd."  I 
feel  for  those  people  the  same  instinc 
tive  distrust  that  I  feel  for  a  man  who 
does  not  like  a  dog,  or  a  woman  who 
does  not  like  children.  I  do  not  mean 
that  I  crave  the  actual  physical  dis 
comfort  of  having  my  clothes  torn  or 
my  toes  stepped  on,  but  from  the 
vantage  of  a  somewhat  detached  point 
of  view,  a  crowd  is  the  most  entertain 
ing  thing  in  the  world. 

I  do  not  mean  to  sentimentalize 

59 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

about  it  —  that  is  easy.  Very  young 
or  very  emotional  people  do  that.  I 
did  in  my  youth. 

I  recall  once  sitting  with  a  friend  in 
an  office  window  overlooking  one  of 
the  thoroughfares  of  a  city.  It  was 
the  night  of  a  national  election  and 
the  returns  were  being  flashed  upon 
transparencies  above  the  heads  of  the 
throng.  The  street  was  packed  from 
curb  to  curb,  and  as  the  bulletins  ap 
peared,  the  great  crowd  surged  with 
emotion  —  now  cheers  for  news  favor 
able  to  some  popular  candidate,  or 
uneasy  silence  upon  the  receipt  of  un 
favorable  figures. 

I  stood  at  the  window  and  looked 
down  at  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
sights  in  the  world  —  a  great  crowd 
swayed  by  the  joy  of  victory  or  the 
bitterness  of  defeat.  My  friend 
60 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

lounged  in  more  philosophic  mood, 
and  did  not  seem  to  share  my  emo 
tional  interest  in  the  spectacle  below. 
The  bulletins  flashed  decisive  figures 
and  the  crowd  broke  into  a  whirlwind 
of  cheers.  I  turned  to  my  friend  and 
cried,  "  Look !  look !  Is  n't  it  magnifi 
cent?  "  He  cast  a  calculating  eye  upon 
the  crowd  and  said,  "Yes,  it  recon 
ciles  me  to  the  hat  business." 

I  then,  for  the  first  time,  realized 
that  my  friend  was  a  manufacturer  of 
hats ;  and  incidentally  the  great  pict 
ure  changed  from  an  exhibition  of 
American  political  enthusiasm  to  a 
more  humble  exhibition  of  hats.  My 
friend  was  right:  every  man  jammed 
in  that  great  crowd  from  building  to 
building  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see 
wore  a  hat. 

The  two  of  us  in  the  window  repre- 
61 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

sented  two  distinct  points  of  view,  and 
who  can  say  which  was  the  right  one. 

In  my  casual  studies  of  the  crowd, 
I  have  been  struck  by  several  pecu 
liarities.  First  and  foremost  is  Opti 
mism.  The  crowd  as  a  rule  is  hope 
lessly  optimistic ;  so  are  most  individ 
uals.  The  fact  that  most  people  are 
reconciled  to  their  earthly  lot  is  one 
of  the  most  beneficent  provisions  of 
an  all-wise  Providence.  There  is  a  lot 
of  grumbling,  but  the  average  man  is, 
on  the  whole,  thankful  he  is  no  worse 
off  than  he  is. 

We  see  it  everywhere  on  the  street. 
I  recall  one  stormy,  winter  evening 
when  I  was  making  my  tortuous  way 
through  a  crowded  city  street  to  take 
what  is  known  in  the  commuter's 
Vernacular  as  "the  5  :22."  It  was  bit 
ing  cold  and  the  storm  of  sleet  and 
62 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

snow  made  walking  difficult.  The 
crowd,  bundle-laden  and  beset  by 
storm  and  wind,  was,  as  usual,  good- 
natured.  As  I  crossed  an  intersecting 
street  there  stood  at  the  corner,  mute 
and  immovable,  a  heavily-laden  truck 
buried  half  to  its  hubs  in  city  slush. 
Protruding  from  its  side  I  saw 
beneath  the  fitful  glare  of  the  street 
light  a  pair  of  well-worn  boots  and 
ragged  overalls.  From  the  dark  and 
cavernous  depths  beneath  the  silent 
monster  there  came  sharp  metallic 
sounds  —  unmistakable  evidence  to 
the  accustomed  motorist  that  needed 
repairs  were  being  made  under  the 
most  difficult  circumstances.  My 
heart  went  out  to  the  belated  truck 
man,  and  I  speculated  a  little  at  what 
grim  hour  of  the  night  he  would  prob 
ably  finish  his  day's  work. 

63 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

A  fellow  teamster  passed,  high  aloft 
on  the  swinging  seat  of  a  humbler 
horse-drawn  vehicle.  He  evidently 
recognized  the  boots  and  the  overalls, 
for  leaning  down  from  his  lofty  seat 
he  shouted  to  them,  "  Hello  Bill,  how's 
everything  ? "  And  from  the  dim  and 
damp  recesses  of  the  truck,  "  Fine  as 
silk.  How's  the  boy?"  rang  out  in 
rich  hibernian  accents,  flinging  its 
challenge  in  the  face  of  a  world  of  cold 
and  storm  and  discomfort. 

This  is  the  spirit  you  find  if  you  will 
look  for  it  in  every  walk  in  life,  and  it 
is  the  spirit  which,  after  all,  has  made 
this  strange  composite  nation  of  ours 
indomitable  in  the  face  of  difficulty. 
I  admit  it  may  sometimes  be  a  bluff, 
but  it  is  heroic  nevertheless. 

Another  characteristic  of  the  crowd 
which  is  there  if  you  will  look 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

for  it,  is  Helpfulness.  Walk  the  city 
streets  and  watch  the  little  tragedies 
and  comedies  which  are  constantly 
being  enacted  at  your  elbow.  On  the 
surface  it  looks  like  nothing  but  a 
mad  rush  —  each  man  and  woman  for 
themselves  and  his  satanic  majesty 
close  upon  the  heels  of  the  hinder- 
most;  but  amid  all  the  noise  and 
bustle,  if  you  look  closely,  you  will  see 
constant  evidences  that  a  certain  pro 
portion  of  these  whirling  little  units  in 
the  crowd  have  thought  and  care  for 
others  than  themselves.  Watch  the 
blind  man  on  the  corner,  tapping 
the  curb  with  a  tiny  cane,  lightly 
held  in  irresolute  hand.  By  some 
curious  law  of  averages,  it  will  be 
the  third  passer-by  who  will  help  him 
across.  The  first  two  doubtless  feel 
faint  stirrings  in  them  to  help,  but 

65 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

the  third  man  is  he  who  really  stops 
to  do  it. 

One  in  three  is  not  a  bad  propor 
tion,  and  strangely  enough  we  have 
distinguished  precedent  for  these  fig 
ures,  for  was  it  not  the  priest  and  the 
levite  that  passed  by  before  the  Good 
Samaritan  came?  He  was  the  third 
man.  The  proportion  was  the  same 
then  as  now.  Human  nature  does  not 
change  with  the  centuries. 

And  hand  in  hand  with  this  spirit 
of  helpfulness  is  another  quality, 
somewhat  more  elusive  and  difficult 
to  detect,  but  abundantly  in  evidence 
wherever  men  and  women  meet  to 
gether —  and  that  is  Faith. 

One  of  the  great  charms  of  the  side 
walk  orator  is  that  he  answers  with 
tremendous  positiveness  and  power  a 
thousand-and-one  utterly  unanswer- 
66 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

able  questions.  It  is  a  relief  to  find  an 
occasional  man  to  whom  life  is  an 
open  book  and  for  whom  the  future 
holds  no  doubt  and  the  past  no  re 
grets.  While  the  average  man  is  fortu 
nate  in  being  able  to  dismiss  for  the 
most  part  the  regrets  of  the  past,  he 
has  yet  to  arrive  at  a  point  where  he 
can  dismiss  the  questions  which  assail 
him  in  regard  to  the  future.  The 
crowd  is  full  of  eagerness  to  question, 
and  finds  much  in  life  to  ask  ques 
tions  about. 

Did  you  ever  see  a  crowd  listen 
ing  to  the  buglers  playing  the  old 
tunes  on  Christmas  or  New  Year's 
Eve?  Did  you  ever  look  down  into 
the  faces  of  a  crowd  listening  to  a 
great  public  speaker?  Did  you  ever 
mix  with  the  brethren  and  sisters  of  a 
Sunday  on  the  Boston  Common,  as 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

they  listen  to  the  presentation  of 
every  known  form  of  religious  and 
scientific  untruth?  You  could  not  do 
it  without  feeling  that  a  great  many 
people  outside  of  colleges  and  wom 
en's  clubs  are  trying  to  find  out  a  little 
about  a  very  large  number  of  things. 

I  have  always  cherished  an  affec 
tion  for  the  dear  old  gentleman  who 
stood  next  to  me  listening  to  a  lucid 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  which 
would  culminate  on  October  20, 
1949,  with  the  earth  falling  into  the 
sun  and  going  off  like  a  damp  fire 
cracker,  and  Mars  and  Venus  and  all 
the  rest  doing  a  glorious  celestial 
tango  while  the  universe  reeled  back 
into  chaos. 

As  the  perspiring  orator  stopped  to 
mop  his  forehead,  the  old  gentleman 
turned  to  me  with  the  sweetest  smile 
68 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

in  the  world  and  said,  "  How  interest 
ing  ;  I  never  thought  of  that  before ;  " 
and  then  with  a  little  sigh  added, 
"  But  I'm  afraid  I  shan't  live  to  see  it 
all." 

If  it  is  not  too  presuming  for  a  lay 
man  to  make  such  a  suggestion,  is  not 
the  function  of  the  church  in  its  last 
analysis  to  answer  questions? 

Sometimes  this  passion  for  ques 
tions  is  side-tracked  and  then  we  see 
all  sorts  of  hysteria  and  trouble.  The 
magazine  and  daily  press  feed  and 
fatten  on  it.  A  while  ago  we  saw  it 
very  plainly  in  the  unpleasant  and  ex 
ceedingly  unprofitable  clamor  about 
sex-education. 

I  once  had  occasion  to  lecture  be 
fore  an  audience  of  delightful  ladies 
in  a  suburban  community.  Before  my 
introduction,  the  programme  for  the 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

coming  month  was  announced,  cover 
ing  the  subjects  which  papers  were 
to  be  read  and  discussions  carried 
on.  The  programme  covered  a  range 
of  subjects  which  in  my  innocence  I 
had  previously  thought  properly  con 
fined  to  the  criminologist  and  similar 
experts.  But  no,  these  were  the  sub 
jects  upon  which  this  entire  circle  of 
women  were  to  devote  a  month  of 
their  precious  time.  After  this  awe-in 
spiring  announcement,  I  was  intro 
duced  as  the  speaker  of  the  afternoon ; 
and  never  before  had  my  utterances 
seemed  to  me  so  trivial  and  so  out  of 
keeping  with  the  spirit  of  the  times. 
At  the  conclusion  of  my  talk  one 
brave  soul  ventured  to  thank  me  for 
an  hour  quite  free  from  the  discussion 
of  the  unpleasant  and  the  abnormal. 
She  seemed  half  apologetic  for  the 
70 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

programme  which  I  had  heard  an 
nounced,  and  assured  me  that  after 
all  the  ladies  of  the  club  did  like  pleas 
ant  things. 

Like  the  lady  in  question,  the  crowd 
is  normal,  if  it  is  let  alone  and  al 
lowed  to  express  itself  naturally. 

Since  the  episode  described  above, 
a  great  and  happy  change  has  taken 
place.  As  if  by  a  miracle,  all  this  dis 
cussion  of  the  sordid  and  seamy  side 
of  life  seems  to  have  been  swept  from 
programmes  of  such  organizations, 
and  the  minds  of  normal  folk  are  busy 
with  subjects  much  more  edifying  and 
much  more  helpful.  Perhaps  it  has 
taken  a  great  war  to  silence  the  clam 
orous  minority  in  the  crowd  which 
was  foistering  the  discussion  of  these 
problems  upon  an  unwilling  majority. 

Places  of  public  assembly  offer  an 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

excellent  opportunity  for  the  study  of 
your  fellow  man,  particularly  if  he 
be  there  bent  upon  recreation  or 
amusement.  Watch  the  people  about 
you  at  the  theatre.  Near  you  are  a 
boy  and  girl  —  not  an  uncommon  or 
unusual  combination.  Both  obviously 
dressed  in  their  best,  each  more  proud 
of  the  other  than  of  himself  or  her 
self.  Observe  the  conscious  gallantry 
of  the  escort,  and  the  very  evident 
pleasure  of  the  escorted.  If  they 
are  more  intent  upon  themselves  and 
their  affairs  than  on  the  mimic 
drama  of  the  stage,  and  if  they 
refresh  themselves  with  confectionery 
and  whisper  and  giggle  at  inop 
portune  moments,  do  not  let  it  bother 
you.  It  is  not  done  to  offend.  They 
are  simply  working  out  the  great  laws 
of  human  destiny. 

72 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

Beyond  them  we  see  the  middle- 
aged  and  sympathize  with  their  ef 
forts  to  be  young  and  gay  and  not  to 
be  bored  —  that  each  may  feel  the  old 
pride  in  the  other. 

Again,  the  aged,  serene  in  the  as 
surance  that  all  is  well,  exchanging 
timid  reminiscent  glances  at  the  ex 
pression  of  some  sentiment  on  the 
stage  —  hackneyed  perhaps,  but  en 
shrined  in  enduring  significance  in 
their  hearts. 

So  the  world  wags.  It  is  all  there  to 
see  if  you  will  see  it  —  all  so  gloriously 
human  with  all  the  glorious  human 
virtues  and  weaknesses.  They  are  like 
the  amiable  "  scrub  lady "  who  for 
years  gave  my  office  a  cursory  clean 
ing.  Like  some  unseen,  unknown 
creature,  she  ministered  to  me,  un 
recognized  and  unfelt,  like  a  shower 

73 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

at  night,  until  one  fatal  morning  she 
was  found  prone  upon  the  floor 
clutching  her  worn  mop  in  one  hand, 
and  a  bottle  in  the  other.  Upon  in 
vestigation,  a  few  somewhat  ex 
tenuating  circumstances  were  un 
earthed:  a  wayward  son,  a  husband 
on  probation,  failing  health,  a  sick 
neighbor  to  be  watched  with  during 
the  few  hours  she  should  have  de 
voted  to  sleep,  an  ill-advised  attempt 
to  whip  up  a  worn-out  heart  with  a 
little  Dutch  courage.  When  it  was  all 
over,  she  apologized  for  her  tearful 
ness  when  giving  thanks,  by  explain 
ing  that  she  "  was  not  accustomed  to 
being  treated  human." 

Back  of  the  humblest  and  often  the 
most  sordid  little  dramas  there  is  a 
human  explanation. 

This   all   sounds   very   pious   and 

74 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

preachy.  I  do  not  mean  it  to  be.  It 
is  only  a  plea  to  recognize  the  human 
equation  in  all  our  relationships. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  lack  of  this 
attitude  is  the  real  defect  in  many  of 
our  most  enlightened  and  unselfish 
undertakings.  I  fancy  it  hinders  more 
in  charitable  work  and  education 
than  in  anything  else. 

I  dined  once  with  250  schoolmas 
ters —  250,  count  them.  To  a  layman, 
unaccustomed  to  scholastic  surround 
ings,  it  was  a  terrifying  experience. 
My  youthful  impression  of  school 
masters  was  not  altogether  a  happy 
one,  perhaps  because  of  the  mutual 
distrust  which  seemed  always  to  exist 
between  myself  and  my  preceptors. 
Although  I  have  met  many  charm 
ing  and  delightful  schoolmasters 
since  those  early  days,  I  have  never 

75 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

been  able  to  free  my  mind  from  my 
early  associations. 

As  I  sat  that  memorable  evening 
with  the  other  guests,  ill  at  ease  and 
full  of  forebodings  for  the  future,  at 
what  is  called  at  such  functions  "  the 
speaker's  table,"  I  looked  down  long 
rows  of  chairs  in  which  the  school 
masters  sat  at  dinner.  An  irresistible 
desire  to  look  under  each  and  every 
chair  seized  me.  I  felt  sure  that  under 
every  one  I  would  see  a  pair  of  hoofs 
and  a  tail  neatly  curled  upon  the 
floor. 

Despite  the  fact  that  none  of  them 
seemed  to  have  these  satanic  adorn 
ments,  the  impression  they  gave  on 
the  whole  was  forbidding  and  solemn 
in  the  extreme. 

When  the  speaking  began,  I  real 
ized  the  reason  for  their  subdued  de- 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

meanor.  This  function  was  like  count 
less  others  which  they  had  attended, 
and  at  every  one  of  them  these  poor 
men  had  been  exhorted  and  uplifted 
and  inspired  until  life  itself  had 
become  a  burden.  Though  you  may 
labor  in  the  most  inviting  of  vine 
yards,  though  your  labor  may  be  pro 
ductive  of  the  highest  possible  good, 
it  is  not  in  human  nature  to  stand  be 
ing  told  constantly  how  lofty  a  mis 
sion  you  fulfill,  and  how  solemnly  you 
should  approach  your  daily  task. 

It  still  remains  a  mystery  by  what 
odd  trick  of  fate  I  should  have  been 
present  at  such  a  gathering.  Probably 
some  member  of  the  committee  in 
charge,  with  a  whimsical  feeling  for 
the  inappropriate,  had  brought  it 
about.  At  all  events,  the  evil  hour  ar 
rived,  and  with  the  utmost  decorum 

77 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

and  the  most  sublime  dignity,  I  was 
introduced  by  the  chairman  quite  as 
if  I  were  the  chemical  formula  for 
hydrochloric  acid,  or  a  new  guide 
to  child-study. 

Never  was  after-dinner  speaker  in 
a  more  difficult  position.  I  knew 
nothing  of  my  hearers  or  their  inter 
ests,  I  did  not  even  speak  their  lan 
guage,  and  yet  here  I  was  being 
offered  to  them  as  if  from  my  lips 
would  fall  veritable  pearls  of  wisdom. 
Led  by  a  blind  instinct  that  after 
all  this  formidable  gathering  was 
composed  of  human  beings,  I  plunged 
in.  I  did  my  little  best.  I  even  went 
so  far  as  to  make  a  feeble  little  joke. 
They  stirred  uneasily  in  their  chairs 
and  looked  at  the  superintendent  of 
schools  out  of  the  corners  of  their  eyes, 
to  see  what  he  thought  of  such  irrever- 

78 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

ence.  Before  long  I  realized  that  they 
had  ceased  looking  at  the  toes  of  their 
boots  or  upon  the  disordered  table 
cloths,  and  were  looking  at  me.  En 
couraged  by  this  mute  approval,  I 
more  than  ever  overstepped  the 
bounds  of  decorous  behavior  on  such 
an  occasion.  Suddenly,  from  a  dis 
tant  table,  shadowed  by  an  overhang 
ing  balcony,  there  rang  out  a  rich  peal 
of  truly  hibernian  laughter.  This  was 
too  much  even  for  their  pedagogical 
decorum,  and  the  laughter  swept  over 
the  entire  company.  Never  was  a 
feeble  inanity  received  with  such  up 
roarious  applause.  From  then  on,  it 
was  a  lovely  party. 

At  some  point  during  my  subse 
quent  remarks  the  superintendent  of 
schools  quietly  folded  his  tent  and 
stole  away.  At  the  conclusion  of  my 

79 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

remarks,  they  crowded  about  me.  The 
awful  incubus  of  uplift  no  more  de 
pressed  them.  Each  had  his  pet  story 
to  tell,  every  one  of  which  was  better 
than  any  I  had  told. 

Later  in  the  evening  I  found  my 
self  surrounded  by  some  of  the 
younger,  more  resolute,  and  perhaps 
more  rebellious  of  the  company.  They 
explained  to  my  marveling  mind  the 
intricacies  of  the  modern  public 
school  system — the  mass  of  informa 
tion  in  regard  to  the  children  in  their 
charge:  card  indices  of  indescribable 
complexity  explaining  domestic  re 
lationships  in  every  family  repre 
sented  and  its  collateral  branches; 
the  character  of  labor  performed  by 
members  of  the  family — whether  the 
mother  worked  "in"  or  "out,"  and 
many  other  intimate  details,  includ- 
80 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

ing  the  particular  degree  of  inebriety 
to  which  the  masculine  head  of  the 
house  was  addicted.  Nationalities 
were  designated  by  different  colors, 
and  numberless  intricate  systems  of 
cross-reference  supplied  the  details. 

You  remember  the  caucus  race  in 
"Alice  in  Wonderland."  One  of  these 
men  who  had  spent  years  in  prepar 
ing  himself  for  a  pedagogical  career, 
who  had  degrees  from  countless 
American  and  foreign  universities, 
had  reached  a  dizzy  height  in  the 
school  system  of  our  country,  where 
he  no  longer  taught  anybody  any 
thing.  He  seemed  to  be  some  sort  of 
petty  officer  who  had  numberless  de 
tails  in  hand,  and  one  of  his  principal 
duties  seemed  to  be  the  scientific  dry 
ing  of  wet  children.  His  method 
struck  me  as  original  and  quite  to  be 
81 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

recommended  to  parents  of  large 
families.  Children  in  every  station  of 
life  will  get  wet  —  it  seems  to  be  a  law 
of  nature;  particularly  do  they  get 
wet  as  to  their  shoes  and  stockings, 
if  stockings  be  worn.  And  especially 
is  this  true  of  the  children  whose 
playground  is  the  street  and  the 
gutter. 

First  having  ascertained  the  num 
ber  of  heating  units  at  his  disposal,  he 
would  then  divide  the  children  into 
groups  of  wet,  wetter,  and  wettest. 
The  wettest  group  would  be  placed 
nearest  to  the  heating  unit  and  the 
wet  group  on  the  perimeter  of  the 
circle.  After  a  stated  period  the  circles 
were  reversed,  and  so  the  warmth  was 
equally  distributed.  After  this  process 
had  been  carried  on  indefinitely,  the 
children  were  placed  in  martial  array, 
82 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

and  marched  to  complete  the  drying 
process. 

This  much  the  mind  of  a  layman 
might  have  achieved;  but  it  required 
the  trained  mind  of  the  specialist  to 
conceive  the  finishing  touch  which 
gave  artistry  to  his  performance. 

The  children  not  only  marched,  but 
they  marched  with  what  was  de 
scribed  as  "digital  activity."  Inside 
their  capacious  and  ragged  shoes, 
their  little  toes  twinkled  merrily  as 
they  marched  up  and  down  the  aisles, 
thus,  as  it  was  explained,  creating 
"ventilation  and  a  quick  drying 
process." 

During  the  recital  of  this  narrative, 
and  in  all  the  discussions  of  the  even 
ing,  I  noticed  that  the  boy  or  girl  who 
was  consigned  to  the  tender  mercies 
of  this  complicated  system,  ceased  to 

83 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

be  a  boy  or  a  girl  as  soon  as  they  came 
under  its  benign  influence.  Once  the 
portals  of  the  schoolhouse  swung  open 
to  them,  they  lost  sex,  personality, 
heart  and  soul  and  body,  and  became 
"a  unit  of  student  attendance." 

I  went  to  New  York  on  the  mid 
night  train  that  night  and  as  I  rattled 
along  I  found  myself  saying, 
"  Red  card  for  a  German, 
Green  card  for  a  Jew, 
White  card  for  the  Irish, 
For  the  Greek  a  blue," 
And  when  the  porter  shook  me  at 
122d  Street,  I  was  saying,  "Gosh,  I'd 
like  to  be  Superintendent  of  Schools 
for  one  hour."    But  it  wouldn't  be 
safe! 

I  do  not  mean  this  as  an  indictment 
of  our  very  excellent  school  system, 
but  rather  to  illustrate  the  tendency 
84 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

shown  by  every  organization  in  this 
country  to  over-emphasize  the  ma 
chine  part  of  its  operations,  and  to 
minimize  almost  to  the  vanishing 
point  the  human  element.  When  I 
recall  my  own  college  experience,  my 
recollection  of  laboratory  and  class 
room  equipment  is  very  meagre.  The 
dominant  figure  in  my  recollection  is 
that  of  a  delightful  and  scholarly 
gentleman  who  read  Greek  poetry 
aloud  to  us  and  instilled  into  the  mind 
of  many  an  idle  boy  a  love  of  the 
classics.  He  did  this  as  an  individual 
and  not  as  part  of  a  system  toward  a 
'*  unit  of  student  attendance." 

There  is  a  great  hue  and  cry 
against  the  personal  pronoun,  first 
person  singular.  But  I  rather  like  to 
reflect  upon  it.  What  a  straight  up 
standing  little  letter  it  is.  I  like  to 

85 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

think  of  it  as  a  peg  firmly  driven  into 
the  ground:  here  in  a  city  lot,  there 
on  the  broad  acres  of  a  western  home 
stead  ;  and,  running  out  from  it  to  the 
invisible  circumference  of  an  invisible 
circle,  are  countless  little  threads  of 
acquaintance,  devotion,  or  influence; 
but  there  in  the  middle  stands  the 
little  letter  "  I."  That  is  you,  that  is 
your  neighbor — every  one  of  us  is  an 
"  I."  We  think,  we  live,  in  terms  of 
the  first  person  singular,  and  how  else 
can  we  live?  But  the  mistake  we 
make  is  when  we  ignore  the  "  I,"  the 
ego,  in  the  other  fellow. 

Was  it  Barrie,  or  who  was  it,  who 
wrote  the  matchless  little  story  of  the 
discovery  by  a  selfish  man  of  the  ego 
in  the  club  waiter?  How  his  senses 
reeled  when  he  found  out  that  this 
automation  had  a  wife  and  babies, 
86 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

and  suffered,  loved,  hoped,  and  de 
spaired  just  like  a  real  person. 

I  have  spoken  of  Optimism,  Help 
fulness,  and  Faith  as  characteristic  of 
the  crowd.  There  is  another  element 
which  makes  the  average  man  inter 
esting —  a  little  more  obscure  and  a 
little  more  difficult  to  get  at,  because 
it  lies  deeper  in  him  —  but  it  is  there 
none  the  less,  if  you  will  find  it,  and 
that  is  Enthusiasm. 

It  does  not  make  the  least  differ 
ence  in  the  world  what  a  man  or 
woman  may  be  enthusiastic  about.  Of 
course,  some  fields  of  human  en 
deavor  are  more  productive  of  reward 
and  more  intellectually  stimulating 
than  others,  but  the  important  ele 
ment  is  the  enthusiasm  itself,  not 
its  object.  If  any  one  ever  makes 
habitual  use  of  the  smoking-car  on 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

suburban  trains  and  has  failed  to 
notice  this  characteristic,  he  has  not 
cultivated  successfully  the  open  mind 
and  seeing  eye. 

The  congested  condition  of  traffic 
on  the  line  I  use  makes  it  necessary 
for  me  to  have  as  seat-companion  a 
highly  interesting  and  varied  assort 
ment  of  acquaintances.  With  these 
acquaintances  I  daily  hold  conversa 
tion,  and  though  the  allotted  time  for 
the  beginning  and  ripening  of  our 
acquaintanceship  is  a  scant  half-hour, 
rarely  have  I  failed,  before  the  end  of 
the  trip,  to  discover  somewhere  in  the 
tired  body  or  jaded  mind  of  my  com 
panion  a  spark  of  enthusiasm  for 
something.  It  may  be  poultry  or 
hydrangeas ;  it  may  be  an  automobile 
or  Ruskin,  but  it  is  there,  and  the 
flame  burns  brightly,  once  you  find  it. 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

Sympathy  with  a  man's  enthu 
siasms  is  the  best  possible  starting- 
point  for  an  acquaintance.  I  recall 
once  visiting  many  years  ago  a  large 
Western  city.  I  arrived  at  my  hotel 
at  about  the  dinner-hour,  and  was 
piloted  by  the  head  waiter  through  a 
wilderness  of  small  tables  and  de 
posited  in  a  remote  corner  at  a  small 
table  set  for  two.  The  place  opposite 
me  was  already  occupied  by  one  of  the 
most  ferocious-looking  human  beings 
I  had  ever  encountered.  Even  seated 
as  he  was,  his  massive  bulk  towered 
above  the  frail  table.  As  I  took  my 
seat,  he  glared  at  me  with  ferocious 
eyes  and  vouchsafed  no  greeting. 

I  ate  my  dinner  in  a  subdued  and 

apprehensive   mood,   but   filled  with 

wonder     and     amazement     at     the 

amount  and  variety  of  the  viands  my 

89 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

vis-a-vis  consumed.  At  the  conclusion 
of  a  complicated  and  varied  repast,  he 
pushed  back  his  chair  and  sat  gazing 
at  me  with  evident  interest.  Pres 
ently,  with  some  premonitory  rum 
blings,  he  addressed  to  me  the  ques 
tion  which  is  the  countersign  of  a 
great  fraternity.  "What's  your  line?  " 
he  asked  with  admirable  directness. 
The  stamp  of  the  commercial  traveler 
was  upon  me  and  by  some  subtle  in 
sight  born  of  long  experience  he  had 
detected  it. 

I  explained  that  I  was  "traveling 
with  books,"  and  that  my  humble 
function  was  to  disseminate  the  pale 
light  of  pure  literature  over  the  length 
and  breadth  of  our  fair  land.  He 
seemed  but  little  impressed  by  this 
announcement,  and  no  further  in 
quiries  followed. 

90 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

The  amenities  of  the  occasion 
evidently  demanded  something  of  me. 
I  saw  my  duty  and  I  did  it.  "  What  is 
your  line?  "  I  asked.  Before  my  ques 
tion  he  had  sat  inert  and  weary,  bored 
and  perhaps  suffering  from  slightly 
undue  repletion,  and  eager  for  the 
black  cigar  in  the  hotel  lobby.  But 
when  the  magic  words  were  spoken, 
postprandial  delights  were  forgotten, 
and  he  leaned  across  the  table,  shak 
ing  an  impressive  finger  at  me,  and 
announced  with  a  surprising  burst  of 
emphasis,  "  Young  man,  I  travel  with 
the  most  complete  line  of  babies' 
sundries  west  of  the  Mississippi 
River." 

My  astonishment  at  this  announce 
ment  prevented  further  inquiries ;  but 
they  were  not  necessary,  for  with  a 
torrent  of  expletive  he  extolled  the 

91 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

virtues  of  his  line.  I  had  scarcely 
finished  my  coffee,  but  he  rose  and 
seized  me  by  the  arm,  and  I  was  con 
ducted  to  a  vast  subterranean  cham 
ber  where  he  "  spread."  Beneath  the 
cold  glitter  of  countless  electric  lights, 
on  long  tables  on  all  four  sides  of  the 
room,  was  displayed  a  variety  of  in 
fant's  garments,  the  like  of  which  I 
had  never  beheld.  He  called  my  at 
tention  to  some  of  the  specialties  — 
the  "  caps  and  mittens  with  one,  two 
or  three  balls,"  outer  garments,  bibs, 
stockings,  dresses,  and  pins  with 
"Our  Baby"  and  "Darling"  in 
black,  blue,  and  green  enamel. 

The  colossus  rolled  heavily  from 
table  to  table,  and  as  a  climax  to  his 
exhibition,  he  stood  erect  amid  the 
splendors  about  him  while  he  caress 
ingly  placed  on  a  large  and  hairy  fist 
92 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

a  baby's  lace  bonnet,  deftly  tying  a 
perfect  bow  with  his  left  hand.  He 
held  it  aloft,  and  transfixing  me  with 
his  piercing  eye,  fairly  shouted, 
"  Some  class  to  that !  " 

Using  his  enthusiasm  as  a  starting- 
point,  we  became  close  friends  during 
my  brief  sojourn  in  the  city.  Every 
night  at  dinner  he  extolled  his  wares, 
expressed  his  vigorous  opinion  of  the 
various  buyers,  and  filled  the  evening 
with  anecdotes  from  his  varied  experi 
ences.  During  my  brief  acquaintance 
ship  with  him,  I  do  not  think  he  be 
trayed  the  slightest  interest  in  any 
thing  in  the  world  except  his  "  line " 
until  the  last  evening  that  we  sat  and 
smoked  together,  when  he  told  me  of 
his  crippled  son,  for  whose  restoration 
to  health  and  vigor  he  was  making 
every  conceivable  sacrifice. 

93 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

In  this  instance  the  curious 
and  humorous  contrast  between  the 
physique  of  the  man  and  the  object 
of  his  enthusiasm  gave  piquancy  to 
the  incident;  but  its  real  significance 
was  that  through  this  strange  enthu 
siasm  I  found  myself  admitted  to  the 
secrets  of  his  life.  The  average  man 
can  invariably  be  approached  through 
the  channels  of  his  enthusiasms. 

How  easily  that  phrase  —  the  aver 
age  man  —  slips  from  the  pen.  We 
write  of  him  and  we  talk  of  him,  but 
who  of  us  has  even  seen  or  met  him? 
For  my  own  part,  I  have  never  in  my 
life,  so  far  as  I  know,  met  an  average 
person.  The  average  person  is  like 
"jam  yesterday,  and  jam  to-morrow, 
but  never  jam  to-day."  I  have  never 
met  a  person  who  admitted  himself 
to  be  an  average  person.  We  all  know 

94 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

a  great  many  average  people,  and  in 
some  instances  a  very  considerable 
number  exist  in  our  own  circle  of  rela 
tives,  but  so  far  as  we  are  ourselves 
concerned,  we  are  not  average  per 
sons. 

So  it  is  with  "the  general  public." 
The  general  public  has  more  charges 
laid  at  its  doors,  more  characteris 
tics  attributed  to  it,  more  conjectures 
made  in  regard  to  it,  than  any  other 
class  of  people  in  the  world;  and  yet, 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover, 
I  have  yet  to  meet  a  member  of  the 
general  public. 

How  often  we  hear  the  expression, 
"  I  suppose  the  average  man  or 
woman  does  so  and  so,"  the  inevitable 
implication  being  that  the  speaker 
does  not  share  these  peculiarities. 

And  yet,  if  the  truth  were  known, 

95 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

there  is  not  one  of  us  who  is  not  a 
hopelessly  average  person;  there  is 
not  one  of  us  who  does  not  belong  to 
the  general  public;  and  there  is  not 
one  of  us  to  whom  the  great  law  of 
social  averages  does  not  apply. 

There  are  countless  business  enter 
prises,  the  success  of  which  depends 
entirely  upon  the  power  of  those  di 
recting  them  to  estimate  the  taste  and 
buying  capacity  of  the  average  per 
son.  The  astute  publisher,  or  mail 
order  merchant,  knows  to  a  math 
ematical  nicety  how  high  a  percent 
age  of  replies  he  will  receive  from  a 
given  number  of  circulars  mailed. 
That  these  figures  may  be  of  value  or 
significance,  it  is,  of  course,  necessary 
to  address  a  very  large  group  of  peo 
ple —  a  group  so  large  that  it  fairly 
represents  the  average  of  the  entire 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

country.  Of  course,  you  and  I  are  too 
sophisticated  to  be  influenced  by  the 
expedients  he  employs.  We  know, 
of  course,  that  the  average  persons 
in  the  general  public  reply  in  large 
numbers. 

I  have  been  fortunate  enough  to 
gain  the  confidence  of  a  gentleman  to 
whom  the  sale  of  merchandise  by 
mail  has  become  a  fine  art.  So  skill 
ful  has  he  become,  that  the  business 
man  and  the  psychologist  have  almost 
merged.  Selecting  half  a  million  of  his 
fellow  beings, — including  you,  dear 
reader,  and  others  like  you, —  he  ad 
dresses  his  appeal  to  you.  He  knows 
precisely  how  many  replies  he  will  re 
ceive.  If  his  communication  contains 
a  return  envelope  or  coupon,  a  greater 
number  of  you  will  reply;  if  he  in 
forms  you  that  your  name  has  been 

97 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

sent  to  him  by  a  mutual  friend,  you 
hasten  to  justify  the  unknown  friend's 
confidence  in  you ;  if  you  are  tactfully 
informed  that  you  are  No.  6491  of  a 
selected  group  of  fortunate  individ 
uals  to  receive  this  offer,  you  are 
feverish  in  your  haste  to  return  your 
check  and  order. 

My  friend  has  also  established 
some  interesting  theories  in  regard  to 
the  sexes :  men  reply  at  once  if  they 
are  going  to  reply  at  all,  women  much 
more  slowly;  men  reply  in  larger 
numbers  than  women  to  an  alluring 
offer  requiring  no  money  down  and 
the  payment  for  the  goods  only  upon 
their  receipt;  but  the  women,  having 
assumed  the  obligation,  pay  their  bills 
more  promptly.  These  and  countless 
other  generalizations  he  has  worked 
out  through  long  years  of  experience, 
98 


FELLOW    TRAVELERS 

and  the  general  laws  hold  good  de 
spite  the  social  or  financial  circum 
stances  of  the  persons  addressed.  He 
has  demonstrated  to  my  satisfaction 
that  there  are  average  people,  that 
there  is  a  general  public,  and  I  re 
joice  that  I  am  one  of  them,  for  it 
gives  me  membership  in  the  crowd, 
and  the  crowd  is  what  makes  life  in 
teresting. 

But  it  can  be  well  said,  what  has  all 
this  to  do  with  the  humanities  ?  Per 
haps  it  hasn't  anything.  It  all  re 
minds  me  a  little  of  a  comment  made 
by  a  scholarly  and  long-suffering 
gentleman  who  tried  many  years 
ago  to  teach  me  the  elements  of 
biology.  At  an  examination  I  was  re 
quired  to  write  the  description  of 
some  animal,  the  long  Latin  name  for 
which  was  handed  to  me  on  a  card. 

99 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

The  meaning  of  the  name  I  had  en 
tirely  forgotten,  but,  nothing  daunted, 
I  wrote  a  description  of  as  horrific  a 
beast  as  ever  graced  a  dissecting-table 
or  a  microscope.  Enchanted  with  the 
subject,  I  let  my  imagination  run  riot. 
When  the  paper  was  returned  to  me, 
it  bore  in  my  instructor's  exquisite 
handwriting :  — 

"A  very  interesting  animal,  but 
not  the  one  required.  The  description 
requested  was  that  of  the  common 
house-fly." 

He  was  right :  it  was  not  a  common 
house-fly,  this  creature  of  my  imag 
ination,  —  far  from  it,  —  but  it  was  a 
perfectly  good  animal. 

And    so    this    may    not    be    the 

humanities  —  that    is,    what    others 

more  learned  than   I   mean  by  the 

humanities  —  but  it  may  be  what  I 

100 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

mean.  Let  me  try  to  show  you  what  I 
mean. 

Here  we  are,  all  average  persons, 
traveling  the  same  road.  Shall  we 
push  and  shove  and  put  others  in  the 
gutter?  Shall  we  want  the  road  to 
ourselves  ?  The  wisest  of  us  shy  at  the 
questions,  why  we  are  here,  what  we 
are  doing  and  where  we  are  going.  So 
why  not  recognize  our  fellow  travel 
ers? 

How  a  home  face  cheers  us  in  a  for 
eign  land.  How  quickly  we  make 
friends  in  a  little  journey.  How  gladly 
we  ask  a  stranger  for  gasoline  by  the 
roadside.  Why  not  apply  some  of 
these  principles  to  the  great  journey 
we  are  all  making?  A  little  more 
cheer,  a  little  more  comradeship,  a 
little  more  helpfulness  —  it  would 
help  a  lot. 

101 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

Young  men  and  women  come  to 
me  and  ask  me  how  to  learn  to  write 
(as  if  I  knew),  and  go  away  sadly 
when  all  I  can  say  is,  read  a  few  good 
books,  watch  what  is  going  on  about 
you,  learn  to  know,  really  know,  as 
many  people  as  possible.  In  other 
words,  lead  a  life  as  rich  in  the  essen 
tials  of  humanity  as  you  can;  and 
after  all  the  essentials  are  the  impor 
tant  things.  One  of  the  most  cheering 
aspects  of  this  complex  experience 
which  we  call  human  life,  is  that  in 
its  essentials  it  is  simple  in  the  ex 
treme. 

We  hear  a  great  deal  said  about  the 
complexities  of  life;  we  are  told  that 
it  is  so  much  more  intricate  and  diffi 
cult  than  it  used  to  be.  This  is,  I 
fancy,  because  we  have  roving  about 
over  the  face  of  the  earth  a  variety  of 
102 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

folks  who  would  make  it  so  —  the 
pyschologist,  the  socialist,  the  econ 
omist,  and  countless  faddists,  and 
political  and  social  reformers.  They 
are  the  folks  who  make  life  appear 
complex,  for  they  have  superimposed 
on  life  all  sorts  of  unimportant  de 
tails.  Life  is  really  comparatively 
simple.  It  was  Mr.  Lowell,  I  believe, 
who  claimed  that  there  are  but  three 
jokes  known  to  mankind,  and  Mr. 
Howells  failed  to  find  more  than 
seven  play  plots  in  dramatic  litera 
ture. 

In  the  vernacular  of  daily  speech, 
in  the  common  everyday  experience 
of  the  average  person,  how  much  we 
hear  of  the  cardinal  virtues,  of 
fundamental  passions,  of  primary 
colors.  The  human  race  has  clung 
and  is  clinging  desperately  to  the 
103 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

simplicity  of  life.  It  must,  for  its 
salvation.  This  explains  in  a  measure, 
I  think,  our  passion  for  the  old  thing 
• — the  established  order.  The  thing 
that  has  endured,  we  believe  must 
have  real  qualities  of  permanence  and 
truth. 

Science  is  beginning  to  recognize 
the  importance  of  the  simple  and  the 
elemental  thing.  It  is  beginning  to 
treat  physical  ills  with  fresh  air  and 
sunshine,  and  less  and  less  with  drugs. 
It  would  be  an  interesting  experiment 
to  go  back  to  elemental  things  for  the 
cure  of  more  subtle  maladies.  I 
wonder  what  would  happen  if  we  tried 
to  solve  our  intellectual  and  spiritual 
difficulties  with  the  old-fashioned 
virtues  of  faith  and  humility;  our 
social  difficulties  by  a  recognition  of 
common  humanity. 
104 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

This  may  not  be  possible  for  us  of 
the  present  generation.  We  may  be 
lost  beyond  regeneration,  but  we  can 
help  future  generations.  We  can  try 
to  start  our  children  right.  For 
tunately,  we  do  not  believe  in  heredity 
quite  as  much  as  we  used  to,  and  we 
are  coming  to  believe  more  and  more 
that  each  little  mind  and  heart  starts 
fresh  and  sweet.  Let  the  great  book  of 
nature  teach  them ;  let  them  learn  of 
bird  and  bush,  sunshine,  cloud  and 
storm;  read  them  the  age-old  stories 
of  the  world,  and  give  them  faith  in 
the  simple  and  elemental  things  in 
life. 

I  have  read  more  manuscripts  and 
heard  more  speeches  on  education 
than  on  any  other  subject  known  to 
civilized  man.  I  once  made  a  noble 
resolve  that  never  would  I  raise  my 
105 


FELLOW  TRAVELERS 

feeble  voice  to  add  to  the  clamor,  and 
now  I  find  myself  perilously  near  do 
ing  so. 

The  reactions  of  all  this  talking  and 
writing  on  an  entirely  uneducated 
person  like  myself  may  be  of  some  in 
terest,  so  I  will  venture  to  put  into 
words  how  it  all  strikes  me. 

Most  speakers  and  writers  appear 
to  me  to  be  talking  about  a  kind  of 
education  that  to  my  mind  is  the  very 
poorest  kind,  if  indeed  it  be  education 
at  all.  I  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to 
have  a  vague  theory  in  regard  to  what 
I  call  education. 

Here  is  a  child.  He  is  destined  to 
face  human  life.  We  know,  or  we 
ought  to  know  by  this  time,  that  life 
is  an  experience,  after  all,  simple  in 
its  elements.  We  know  in  the  rough 
what  that  child  will  face.  The  prob- 
106 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

lem  is  to  help  him  do  two  things.  To 
so  meet  life  as  to  get  the  very  most 
out  of  it  —  the  greatest  pleasure,  the 
greatest  usefulness  —  and  to  so  ex 
press  himself  in  terms  of  life  that  he 
will  not  only  enrich  his  heart  and  soul 
and  mind,  but  do  so  for  others  as 
well. 

Now,  to  do  this,  I  grant,  is  difficult, 
but  like  many  other  complex  prob 
lems  perhaps  the  solution  is  nearer  at 
hand  than  we  think.  Perhaps  we  may 
find  the  answer  in  the  heart  and  mind 
of  the  average  man.  The  general  pub 
lic  may  exhibit  characteristics  which 
will  help  us.  The  crowd  and  its  at 
tributes  may  help  to  solve  the  prob 
lem.  These  we  have  found  to  be 
Optimism,  Helpfulness,  Faith,  and 
Enthusiasm  —  four  qualities  which 
would  seem  to  me  to  make  for  a  con- 
107 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

siderably  higher  education  than  the 
kind  with  which  we  are  most  familiar. 
And  if  by  some  happy  chance,  to 
these  four  qualities  we  could  add  a 
certain  nobility  of  outlook  upon  the 
phenomena  of  human  experience,  we 
have  enriched  our  child  beyond  the 
dreams  of  avarice. 

To  fit  ourselves  to  do  this  may  be 
a  difficult  task,  and  it  may  be  neces 
sary  for  us  of  maturer  years  to  place 
ourselves  again  in  school;  but  if  we 
do,  let  daily  experience  be  the  cur 
riculum  and  the  world  about  us  our 
laboratory.  Let  us  join,  in  humble 
and  in  contrite  spirit,  the  first-class  in 
looking  at  people;  let  us  try  to  learn 
in  some  way  the  needs  and  the  per 
plexities  of  our  fellow  travelers.  Let 
us  take  primary  courses  ourselves 
in  the  four  attributes  of  the  crowd; 
108 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

let  us  cultivate  and  exercise  them 
if  we  can;  and  above  all,  let  us 
persist  in  the  belief  that  the  most  in 
teresting  and  most  instructive,  and 
incidentally  the  most  amusing  part  of 
this  earthly  experience  is  our  fellow 
man. 

I  once  sat  on  a  log  on  the  tip  end  of 
Cape  Cod,  with  a  weather-beaten,  sea 
faring  man.  We  had  talked  of  many 
things,  and  finally  I  said  to  him, 
"  Captain,  you  have  sailed  the  world 
over,  you  have  seen  more  wonders 
than  I  have  ever  dreamed  of,  you 
have  been  to  the  Mysterious  Isles, 
and  now  I  ask  you,  what  in  all  your 
wide  experience  is  the  most  interest 
ing  thing  you  ever  saw?  " 

The  captain  stopped  his  whittling 
and  became  reflective;  he  cocked  his 
one  remaining  eye  upon  the  expanse 
109 


FELLOW   TRAVELERS 

of  heaven  above  us  and  spat  reflec 
tively  upon  the  sand.  "Well,  I 
dunno,"  he  said ;  "  I  have  sailed  about 
a  bit,  but  first  and  last,  going  and 
coming,  fair  and  foul,  I  think  the 
most  interesting  thing  I  ever  see  was 
folks." 


THE    END 


IIO 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   .  A 


Cbr  RrtirrfiBr  f?rr« 

CAMBR1DGB  .  MASSACHVSETT!* 
C    .    S    .    A 


University  of  California 

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